Generally, accountability is very important and a key operational concept among vehicle insurance companies and affiliated repair facilities. However, a consistent and effective technique for estimating and documenting vehicle hail damage is lacking.
The current methods of identifying and documenting vehicle dents in the insurance and repair industries are generally ineffective, especially when the vehicle has been damaged by hail. The extent and location of dent damage is often determined by using a best guess method. This technique can obviously be very inaccurate. Furthermore, hail dents do not show up well in photographs and thus their number and location are not documented.
Another technique used involves the placement of wax markers over the dents within a fraction of the area of a vehicle panel (e.g., typically over ¼ of a panel) and multiplying by the necessary factor (e.g., 4) to obtain an estimated number of dents. Hail damage is very random and inconsistent, so this method is also inaccurate. Furthermore, the wax markers also do not show up well in photographs and require timely cleanup. If the vehicle panel is dirty, the cleanup removal of the wax markers can scratch the vehicle's paint. Finally, because the wax markers are only placed on a fraction of the dents, the location of each dent is not documented.
Furthermore, most insurance companies do not ever require photographs of hail damage claims because small to medium sized dents do not show up. Some insurance companies have adjustors take one photograph of the damaged car to prove it exists, but the hail dents are not visible. The lack of good hail damage photographs is a problem for the internal auditors, inside claims adjustors and even shareholders since they have no documentation showing the millions of dollars spent each year in paid out hail damage claims.
Problems with these current methodologies are exacerbated when insureds file duplicate hail damage claims. As an example, an insured may be issued payment for vehicle damage after a first hailstorm. The insured, however, does not have repairs made to the damaged vehicle. When a second hail storm further damages the vehicle, no pictures exist showing the amount of and location of the damage incurred as a result of the initial storm. The current techniques also do not deter the owners of hail damaged vehicles from claiming the same damage with several different insurance companies.
The current techniques also unnecessarily increase costs and overhead to the insurance companies. For instance, auditors currently have to reinspect hail damaged vehicles because accurate photos cannot be filed. In contrast, for collision repairs the insurance industry has established networks of collision repair shops which take photographs of the collision damage, prepare a cost estimate for completing the necessary repairs and then repair the damage. Upon completion of the repairs, the insured pays the shop the deductible and the insurance company pays the balance of the cost directly to the shop. This direct payment method reduces the insurance company's overhead and allows the insurance company to warrant repairs and control expenses. For a repair shop to qualify, a main criteria is that the shop must be able to annotate and upload photographs to show the damaged areas of the vehicle. Because hail damage is difficult to show using the current techniques, the dent repair industry does not have a consistent direct pay network established.
Thus, hail and dent damage is not estimated in any consistent way. The dent damage estimates obtained are generally not accurate and undocumented.